If he’s not compering the omelette challenge on his BBC One show Saturday Kitchen, he’s throwing together culinary masterpieces at food festivals across the country – presumably zooming between each in a sports car he’s reviewing for the motoring column he writes for a Sunday newspaper.

This is a man who doesn’t like to stand still. So the prospect of a quiet, appointment-free bank holiday left the TV chef a little bewildered last week.

“I really won’t know what to do with myself,” he says as we chat before the weekend. “I’ll probably be gardening if the weather is good.

“Basically, I like to be busy. I think all my friends will tell you that – I’m always doing stuff; I can’t stand still for too long.

“Whether I’m in the car or doing the garden, I do like to keep myself busy.”

So no doubt many foodies will be delighted to hear that the chef in the fast lane will be heading to Reading tomorrow to demonstrate his culinary talents for The Oracle’s Fresh Food Festival on the Riverside.

The event, which takes place ahead of the Eat Reading Live celebrations over the weekend, puts James centre-stage with a series of interactive cooking demonstrations.

Audiences will be able to see him create some of his favourite dishes in an environment in which he’s learned to thrive – cooking live.

“It’s just so different and you can basically adapt to what the public wants,” he says. “Especially if you can make it fun. If you can cook five courses on stage in half-an-hour, then there’s a chance people will try just one of them at home.

“It’s great.” But it’s not always plain sailing. “There’s been plenty of things that have gone wrong,” he says, “like the power’s gone completely off – usually in the middle of winter.”

The 37-year-old chef, who is based in Winchester, where he co-owns Cadogan & James deli, says his passion for food came at an early age.

But putting his craft in the public eye wasn’t something he planned on.

“I always knew I was going to be a chef, that was always fact, but I’m not sure how I got involved in TV,” he says. “I was always the shy one at school.

“It kind of happened by chance.

I was spotted as head chef at Hotel du Vin in Winchester and I thought ‘OK, I’ll give this a go’.

“I suppose the confidence came with experience. The first programme is always going to frighten the hell out of you, but over the years you do so many shows and find yourself in different types of situations, you learn to adapt.

“But I still get the adrenaline rush.”

James’s cheeky Yorkshire charm and unabashedly sweet tooth caught the public’s attention in 1996, when he became a frequent guest chef on the BBC’s Ready Steady Cook.

Since then he’s filmed a number of TV series, starring alongside the man who gave him his first break in the kitchen – Antony Worrall Thompson, who runs The Greyhound in Rotherfield Peppard, near Sonning Common and is one of our foodmonthly regular contributors.

“It was actually the first job I ever did and I left there after a year,” James recalls of his time in the kitchens of 190 Queen’s Gate, South Kensington.

“But it was a real eye opener – I think when I went I had only actually been to London three times. But that’s where food was going at the time.

“Certainly Antony has been around my career from the beginning and was a great inspiration.

“It was kind of surreal to be working with him in the restaurant and then be competing against him on Ready Steady Cook.”

But while the cameras roll and the celebrity career sparkles (who can forget his turn on Strictly Come Dancing in 2005?) James says he’ll always stick hard and fast to his first passion – British cuisine.

“That’s why I do a lot of these things, as I’ve always been a big supporter of British food,” he says.

“People are fascinated by food and that is constantly growing more and more. And the great thing about it is that these things give a link between producers and the public.”

Since starting his catering career at the age of 22, James says he’s seen how people’s approach to cooking at home has developed.

More of us like to choose local produce and the trend toward organic foods has never been stronger.

We’re thinking an awful lot more about what we put on our plates, which is a major shift in attitude given our ever-increasing workloads and hectic lifestyles. For who hasn’t at least once succumbed to a quick ready-made option after a long day?

“We are changing for the good, but it’s all about knowledge,” James says. “And the more choices people have and the more information they get, the more chance they’ll make better choices.”

Coming from a restless chap like James, there really is little room to argue with that.

* James will be holding interactive cooking demonstrations, overseen by Ready Steady Cook regular Lesley Waters, tomorrow at The Oracle’s Riverside between 10am and 5pm, alongside the farmers’ market.

* The fun continues on Friday with further cooking demos between 10am and 5pm and cocktail flaring and live jazz between 5.30pm and 9pm.